DEVONPORT DOMAIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 902, 20 February 1930, Page 7

DEVONPORT DOMAIN

LEASE FOR BUILDING ALIENATION DECLINED Reporting to the Devonport Domain Board last evening, the chairman. Mr. ! E. Aldridge, said that while in Wellington last week he had endeavoured to meet the Minister for Lands, to discuss a project for the handing over of King Edward Parade frontage of the Devonport Domain to the Devonport Borough Council. The council planned to lease it for building purposes. The area is now carrying houses, built on leases of the land arranged by the Domain Board 40 years ago. Mr. Aldridge was not successful in seeing the Minister, but the secretary to the Lands Department. Mr. J. li. Thomson, while appreciating the efforts to find money for the upkeep of the domain, was insistent that his department would oppose any alienation of domain land. Even if the department was agreeable to the proposal. Parliamentary sanction would have to be obtained. Moreover, the department would not sanction renewal of any leases now expiring. The Devonport Croquet Club asked for a portion of the land to form lawns Mr. Thomson said he would inspect the domain when he visited Auckland next month. In the accounts of the Devonport Borough Council, the Domain Board is shown as owing a sum of A! 2,000. being deficits accumulated over many years that the borough council has met. Each balance sheet of the borough is tagged by the Audit Department, which says “there is no legal authority for the expenditure of rate money on Devonport Domain.” The council is now I to take steps to write off this asset.